Record card or sheet



W. B. TEMPLETON.

RECORD CARD oRsHEET. I

APPLICATION FILED MAR13 19H!- 1 ,305,3 18. I Patented June 3, 19 19.

TRflC/f PARIS P111778 [-0-]? PARTS AUTO thermore,

UNITED sTATEs PATENT OFFICE.

WALTER B. TEMPLETON, or CHICAGO, rumors.

nEcoEn cam) on SHEET. 1

Specification of Letters Patent.

Patented June 3, 1919.

Application filed March 13, 1918. Serial N 0. 222,123.

To all w/zlom it may concern:

Be'it known that I, WALTER B. TEIn LE- TON, a citizen of the United States, res1d1ng at Chicago, in the county of Cook and State of Illinois,

of diiier'ent colors for various purposes of distinction. This practice has serious limitations for several reasons. In the first place, colored or tinted paper is increasingly expensive and diflicult to obtain. Furwhere the record is printed in black ink, as is the usual custom, the number of colors which may be employed for. the background are quite limited on account of legibility. .Still again, where a solid color background is used for the printing field, and it may be desirable or customary to enter check marks in colored pencil against one or more items of the record, a check mark of a distinctively diflerent color from the card itself must be used to be no ticeable. For example, a red check mark obviously cannot be used on-a red card, or a blue check mark on a blue card.

With these and other deficiencies of the existing practice of'employing solid color cards orsheets in view, my invention has for its aim or object, toprovide a system of record cards or sheets that shall obviate these defects, and at the same time preserve all the advantages of the vari-colored system. To this end, my invention consists essentially in record cards or sheets that are provided with vari-colored marginal bands lying outside the printing field of the cards or sheets. In the preferred form of the invention, the colored band extendsgcentirely around the margin of the card ori'fllsheet, or practically so; although the purposes of the invention" are served in a practical mannor by the use of vari-colored lines extending across the top or bottom margin, or both, of the card or sheet.

To' facilitate a ready understanding of the invention and its advantages, I have shown in the accompanying drawing one typical embodiment thereof, in which Figure 1 is a perspective view of a drawer of ing.

a card filing. cabinet showing alphabeti-' cally arranged groups of cards in place therein; Fig. 2 is a top plan view of several superposed cards slightly displaced edge- Wise relatively to each other and illustrating the facility with which the differently colored cards may be detected in such a group- Referring to'the drawings, 5 designates as an entirety each of the cards which are all alike as to size and character of the printing field; the cards herein shown being ruled and indexed for a specific office record system which is not material to the present invention, and being contained in an The ordinary filing cabinet drawer 7. printing or recording field 6 of each card is white, and around the margin thereof is a colored band, a considerable variety of.

different colors being used for this purpose. For instance, certain of the cards have a red band, indicated by R; others a blue band,

indicated by B; others a green band, indi cated by G; others a yellow band, indicated by Y; others a purple band, indicated by P, and still others an orange band, indicated by O. The number of difierent colors employed is immaterial and will depend upon the number and variety of distinctions desired to be made in either the subject matter written or printed on the cards, or the individuals or subject matter to which the card records may relate. In practice, it is feasible, if desired, to employ all the visible colors of the spectrum,a scheme which is impracticable where solid color cards or sheets are used for the reasons herein above pointed out. I p, I Various colors may, as in the present practice of solid color cards or sheets, be employed to indicate a great variety of distinctions. For instance, in commercial businesses, the different colors may indicate different grades of credit extended to different customers of the house; or they maybe used to indicate different grades, kinds or qualities of goods, of which the cards or sheets contain a record. In library card index systems, I the different colors might indicate difi'erent 105 subjects, such as law, m edicine, philosophy, religion, etc.; or in legal digests the different colors might indicate the decisions or opinions of courts of different authorities or jurisdictions. tions of such limit.

In fact, the uses and applicaa system are almost without j I am aware that in card index systems, it has been proposed to provide the different cards with difi'erently colored index tabs; but such tabs not only involve an addition to the card proper, but they would only very imperfectly and partially fulfil the purposes and objects of the present invention, for the reason that when a number of cards bearing differently colored tabs gether, the 'cards cannot be readily distinguished unless all of the tabs are exposed. In the case of the present invention, the margins of the cards being the most readily eX- posed portions thereof when the cards are in the cabinet drawer, or when they may lie in a superposed pile (as in Fig. 2) the difl'er ent cards are readily detected and distinguished under relative edgewise displaceinent in any direction.

I claim:

1. A record system, comprising a plurality of record cards or sheets each of uniform length and width and having a white field for the entry thereon of matter to be indexed or recorded, and the several cards or sheets having border lines or bands extending the full length of an edge thereof and printed in different colors on diflerent sheets or different groups of sheets respectively.

are grouped to- 2. A record system, comprising a plurality of record cards or sheets each of uniform length and width and having a white field for the entry thereon of matter to be indexed or recorded, and the several cards or sheets having narrow straight border lines or hands extending the full length of the upper edge thereof and printed in different colors on sheets respectively.

3. A record system, comprising a plurality of record cards or sheets each having a White printing or recording field, and the several cards or sheets having on lengthwise of their upper and lower edges border lines or bands printed in different diiferent sheets or different groups of I and extending colors on different sheets or groups of sheets a respectively.

4. A record system, comprising a plurality of record cards or sheets each having a white printing or recording field, and the several cards or sheets having on and extending lengthwise of their upper, lower and side edges substantially continuous border lines or bands printed in different colors on different sheets or groups of sheets respectively.

WALTER B. TEMPLETON. 

